AWS Touts CISPE Membership To Help Its Cloud Services Meet EU GDPR

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has become a member of the Association of Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), bringing several of its major cloud products under the association’s code of conduct for data regulations and compliance.

Given CISPE was created with the goal of promoting data security and compliance within the context of cloud infrastructure services, adhering to the CISPE code of conduct helps bring AWS cloud products into closer compliance with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This in turn should make AWS’ cloud services a more attractive option for companies working within the constraints of GDPR.

“I’m excited to inform you that today, AWS has declared that Amazon EC2, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS CloudTrail, and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) are now fully compliant with the aforementioned CISPE Code of Conduct. This provides our customers with additional assurances that they fully control their data in a safe, secure, and compliant environment when they use AWS,” said Stephen Schmidt, chief information security Officer at AWS.

The CISPE code of conduct offers advantages such as clarifying who is responsible for what when it comes to data protection and actions and commitments cloud providers should take in order to help their customers adhere to GDPR.

Amazon Chime

In other AWS news, the company also revealed Amazon Chime, a communications service fully-managed by AWS for enabling people to communicate inside and outside their organisations through voice, video and chat across mobile and desktop devices.

By being hosted and managed by AWS, Amazon Chime requires no need to deploy or maintain infrastructure and software to support it, and offers the robust security touted by AWS’ data centres and network architecture so that the communications service is suitable for sue in highly-secure organisations.

Amazon Chime comes in iOS, Android, Windows and Mac app form and can synchronise across devices even if a video conference is taking place. Furthermore, AWS is championing the flexibility of Amazon Chime, noting there is no minimum fee for its use just a rolling monthly cost per user.

Amazon Chime is being offered in Basic, Plus, and Pro versions; Basic allows for one-to-one video calls and the use of chat rooms across multiple devices, while Pro offers a full set of features including the ability to schedule and host meetings for up to 100 people; Plus sits somewhere in between the two and allows for screens sharing to be done during meetings and integration with a company’s directory.

AWS’ continued expansion of its cloud portfolio and its bolstered compliance to data regulation looks to secure its already healthy position at the top of the cloud infrastructure market, despite the opinion of detractors.

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